oRToRT...why? well...i'm not really sure why

4/24/08
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I need to write something

I have nothing important to write, but I need to just talk/type, whatever.

Medical bills and insurance are ridiculous. It's no secret that Cristi just gave birth and then only a week or two later, we had to take Makenna to the emergency room with a fever. I had budgeted for the delivery, but the ER visit was fairly stressful for me because Cristi kept trying to prepare me for the huge bill we were eventually going to get. Well, the bills are slowly starting to come in and I'm more frustrated with the process than actually having to pay for the stuff.

For the delivery, I've gotten at least four different bills at this point, I might be forgetting one or two. The lab sent two bills, one each for Makenna and Cristi. Makenna has a pediatrics bill and of course the delivery bill for Cristi. Not to mention, we have already prepaid the OB doctor bills. Now, what gets worse is that I have no idea which of these bills I received have been processed by insurance. Nowhere on the bill does it actually say this. Plus, the lab work for example, was listed on the bill from Baptist AND the actual lab bill. Baptist billed nearly 1200 dollars for lab work, but the lab bill from the laboratory was less than $100. WHAT GIVES!!?!?!

At the end of the day, the bills will get paid. The hospitals will have to write off well over 50% of their charges (which is a different rant altogether), insurance will cover the whole 80-20 deal, and then I just have to get reimbursed from our HSA. The bills are going to be lower than what we had budgeted (I think) so it's all going to work out. That of course doesn't include the hours I will spend on the phone verifying the charges (I've already found over $100 dollars we were overcharges for Cristi's natural delivery) and making sure insurance paid before I send a check.

In other news, I've gotten the itch for a new TV again. We went to Sam's a week or two ago and saw that Samsung now makes a larger DLP. I thought it was a 65", but their website shows a 67". Either way, I realize this is way too big. Here's the next problem. I have been wanting a DLP since I knew the difference because for the same money, you can get a screen over a foot larger. Since the size no longer matters to me as much, although I still have to figure out what size TV will look best in our living room, I've started thinking about going LCD or Plasma. This of course opens up several more options. Cristi and I think that a 50" would look the best in our house and I have been in love with Samsung TVs since Greg's old roommate got his Samsung DLP several years ago. I might spend some time this afternoon researching some stuff. I know that Roxane, over on her website, wrote an article about how she picked out her TV, I'll probably start there.

PayPerPost has confused me once again. Last week, I was eligible for nearly half the opportunities out there. Then, for some reason, they reset my website ranks (which are probably more accurate now). Now, I am eligible for only one offer and it has currently met it's maximum offer acceptance which means I can't get paid for it. What's even more confusing is that I had written and finished a blog post for an offer and went to enter my information, only to find out that I could no longer complete the offer. I'm going to wait a few days to see what happens with my ranking, but regardless, the offers I have completed will still pay out.

If anyone knows anything about 529's, let me know, I'd like to talk with you. I need to set this up for Makenna soon. Every day that goes by is a day of interest that I'm not earning. My calculations show that $20 today will be worth $80 with compounded interest in 18 years. $100 would be $400, so on and so forth.

Don't know if you have read that post or not, but I do recommend purchasing from Best Buy. Their corporate help has been incredible. Don't count on the local WLR people though...they were a bit tougher to work with.